Thursday, December 07, 2006

Captain Cack.

I was going to leave it until I'd seen them all, but I can't hold it in anymore- TORCHWOOD IS A LOAD OF SHIT!!
I tend to watch the Wednesday repeat because the Sunday one goes on too late for us poor sods who have to get up at six in the morning on Monday. Having sat through that load of rubbish last night, I don't think I'll bother watching the rest (although, there is usually fuck all else on, and my better half likes it, so I probably will end up seeing them.)
Russell T.Davies said that it's a shame we don't have shows like Buffy or Angel in this country, so he developed Torchwood. I've got news for him. We still haven't got a show like Buffy. I didn't even like Buffy that much!!
Torchwood's just badly cast, the stories are stupid, not just do I have to suspend disbelief as have it surgically removed! The character Gwen is supposed to be the 'ordinary one' ie. the one who is our eyes into the secret world of Torchwood, but she is an annoying gappy cow. That is some banjo cleaner! How she is supposed to succeed when all she does is cry every five fucking minutes is beyond me. Owen is a supposed to be a Cockney wideboy, and therefore a loveable rogue, but north of Watford, Cockney wideboys are regarded as just arseholes. He's supposed to be a bit of a ladykiller as well, sleeping with Gwen and Susie, and Tosh has a crush on him as well. Not bad for a bloke with a face like a trod-on chip.(Discrepancy: In the first episode he had to use an alien pheromone to get laid, suggesting he was a bit of a sad loser with girls, then all of a sudden, he's turned into Don Juan!) Toshiko is just a boring techie, they made her a lesbian in one episode in an attempt to make her interesting, but it didn't work. Ianto is the Zeppo Marx of the outfit. He just takes up screen space. Last but not least is Captain Jack Harkness. A typical all-teeth Yank. John Barrowman thinks he's the new Tom Cruise but he reminds me of Grandstand's John Inverdale. He's just not convincing when he has to be tough, although he can handle the quips very well, and he probably is the best of the bunch, which isn't saying much at all. He runs like a girl, as well. His history only comes back to haunt him when it's relevant to the plot. How did he get back to present-day Cardiff, anyway?
The direction is also annoying. All those panoramic shots of Cardiff, like it's cool! All those bits where it's slow motion for a few seconds before it returns to normal speed, just to make the gang look cool when they're getting out of their van. Which, incidentally, just makes them look a bit like Scooby-Doo and the Mystery Machine gang.
The plots are stupid. Take last night's episode, for instance. Susie's whole life was packed away in boxes in a garage. It took the gang exactly a minute to find the piece of paper they were looking for, as well as remarking on the Emily Dickinson book that was to come in really useful later on. The supposedly alien glove looks like it was built to fit a human hand, and Susie's whole elaborate plan to get back to life once killed was supposed to be the perfect plan, but it was ridiculous! What if that Max bloke had resisted arrest and got shot instead of being taken back to Torchwood, the plan would have failed. And how did Owen know Gwen only had a couple of hours left to live? How did Gwen find Susie's dad when it was impossible before? The episode was just fucking crap. The episode with that alien that lives off the energy of the male orgasm, how come it just happened, out of all the thousands of people in Cardiff, to possess a girl who just happened to work in a sperm bank? The episode with the fairies; they beat up on paedophiles and school bullies, and we're not supposed to be on their side? That episode just ended badly, with the threat just left to carry on with what they wanted to do. For a show that's supposed to be about aliens and the supernatural, it handles both subjects really badly. It's no coincidence that the best episode was the one about the cannibals' harvest, which contained no supernatural elements in its plot at all.
Also, having a post-watershed slot might be good if they did actually give us an adult show, you know, an intelligent one, not just a dumb one with lesbian kissing and the odd character saying 'fuck' or 'bollocks' just to justify that it is really for grown ups, and not Hollyoaks with SF nobs on.

5 comments:

Mimey said...

You make some fair comments, there are inconsistencies, for sure, working on that script would help, I'd say, in my pitifully ignorant of these things way. Yes the cannibals was especially good, I screamed, didn't I? But there are some super ideas and some cool moments. I for one shall continue watching in the hope that they pull it all together. It could be great.

I'm sure I had something more precise to say than that.

Oh yeah, I liked that they didn't wimp out and offer us an easy resolution to the fairy one. Saving the girl was exactly what we would have expected them to do. Ah-hah!

steve said...

i've never watched it. i dont like john barrowman and i fully expected it to be as shit as you say. Plus i think all the "we're all bisexual and gay and lesbians" bit is a bit too prominent- this sticks out from the adverts and the five minutes i've seen. get over it thats what i say, leave it in the bedroom captain jack.

Mick said...

Jemima: The fairy one was rubbish. Possibly some of the worst CGI effects I've ever seen. I don't think the writers said 'let's not compromise and let the girl go to the fairies'; I reckon they said 'I can't think of an ending. Fuck this, I'm off to the pub.'

Steve: the sexuality thing is a bit heavy-handed, but having a bisexual action hero is a step forward. If only it was someone more convincing than an ex-kid's TV presenter/song-and-dance John Inverdale lookalike with big teeth.

DanProject76 said...

You've pretty much summed up my blogs on this for the last however many weeks...

It's why I get annoyed by it and why I like it. It is silly nonsense but it makes a change from my usual heavy stuff.

SickOfShyteTV said...

100% agreement. Torchwood is indeed, as you correctly point out, a steaming pile of shit.

Most of the newer Doctor Whos are very poor quality also, with some bright points.

But Torchwood never even achieved that, it started shithouse and became MORE AND MORE SHITHOUSE as it went on, it was unbelievable.

***SPOILER***
I tried watching Torchwood: Children Of Earth. I got suuuuuucked right in.
Then at the end, when it was revealed they were baking the kiddies for drugs, I kicked the TV across the room.
No, seriously, I did that - it was an old one and I was replacing it soon.
Cos yeah you have to travel across interstellar space to make drugs. Shit why would you even NEED drugs if you have that tech, etc etc etc.

The bit that makes me sad: Its not the cast or any of the production crew's fault. Its SHIT WRITING. Its REALLY, REALLY, SHIT, WRITING.
I wish the time and money could be recovered somehow and put towards something good, but alas.